


Eternal Happiness

by tangentti



Category: True Detective
Genre: Boltzmann Brains, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:55:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28231290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangentti/pseuds/tangentti
Summary: Philosophy on an empty stomach.
Kudos: 8





	Eternal Happiness

Rust stood at the curb and watched the strange car pull up, clearly intending to intercept him. Marty was at the wheel, so he tamped down the paranoia a notch, and slid into the shotgun seat. “What’s with the new wheels?”

“Same car as yesterday,” Marty said, puzzled. 

It was going to be one of those days. Rust looked into the side mirror, and the thing pretending to be his reflection looked back at him. It wasn’t doing a good job today, looking more like Crash than Rust, even if it was wearing the reflection of his clothes. “I met a physicist on a case once, she’d been murdered but was still talking. Massive dose of radiation, there’s a walking ghost period where your body is dead but hasn’t stopped moving yet, so much damage that your brain doesn’t even get reports on how much harm has been done.”

“You had breakfast yet?” Marty was trying to deflect, like he did whenever Rust got into serious topics.

“She told me that if experience was all generated by the state of your brain, and the universe was infinite, that there were infinite versions of her, all feeling the same, but almost all of them would be just the tiniest bit of matter required to have that sensation, a chance assemblage of atoms, so that the odds were overwhelmingly likely that the room we were in, me talking to her, even her body were just illusions, and that she’d flicker out of existence in the next second without knowing it. She called it the Boltzman Brain argument, and that it accorded with the best understanding of the universe we had. Said it was comforting that death was so certain that any momentary existence was sweet. So you have to wonder what the odds are that this is actually the same car as yesterday, that I’m the same Rust and you are the same Marty.”

“Definitely haven’t had breakfast,” Marty said, and turned the car into a drive-through, rolled down the window. 

The speaker crackled to life: “What do you want?” It was the thing outside the walls of the world, speaking, modulated static on the voice.

“That’s a difficult question,” Rust started, “do I have a coherent self that can even be said to have desires?”

“He’ll have a milkshake, fries, and a burger with serious hot sauce. Give me the breakfast burrito and coffee.” He turned to Rust, “Sugar, fat, salt, protein, heat. Man can’t float off into the air with that in his mouth, and you are definitely floating today.”

“Future’s still open,” Rust said, and they pulled forwards into the unknown.


End file.
